


The Ethics of Being On Standby While Your Boyfriend Is In Surgery

by alderations



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anesthesia, Angst, Background Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Jargon, Medical Procedures, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 13:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13482804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: When you’re as attuned to sound as one Lúcio Correia dos Santos, you are also well aware of some really horrible sounds—things like a screechy guitar riff in an old video game, a coffee maker on its last legs, an airplane flying just a bit too close to the transport, or perhaps your boyfriend’s brother bellowing his feelings about literally anything at any time because the man has no volume control whatsoever. But so far as Lúcio is concerned, the worst sound on Earth is Genji screaming.





	The Ethics of Being On Standby While Your Boyfriend Is In Surgery

When you’re as attuned to sound as one Lúcio Correia dos Santos, you are also well aware of some really horrible sounds—things like a screechy guitar riff in an old video game, a coffee maker on its last legs, an airplane flying just a bit too close to the transport, or perhaps your boyfriend’s brother bellowing his feelings about  _ literally anything at any time  _ because the man has no volume control whatsoever. But so far as Lúcio is concerned, the worst sound on Earth is Genji screaming.

 

Even through the music still thrumming all around him, Lúcio can’t focus on anything except that scream, somewhere behind him and to his left. He can’t leave Reinhardt alone here, especially since their enemies are battering them nearly to their breaking point, but even after he amps up his music in hopes of  _ maybe  _ reaching Genji’s enhanced senses, nothing changes. No, something—Genji’s shouting his name now, shaky and half-broken. Lúcio’s fingers are almost trembling too hard to turn on his comm.

 

“Mercy? I need another healer. Genji—Genji’s down.”

 

Silence for a long moment, and then Angela answers the call. As always, she’s smooth and professional as she drifts down from where she was boosting Fareeha, but her voice sounds like a nest of wasps in Lúcio’s ear. “I have Reinhardt. Go check on Genji.”

 

Even Angela’s voice is tight with anxiety. Lúcio turns as soon as the Caduceus locks onto Reinhardt, then skates at full tilt in the direction of the weak screams. As soon as he turns the corner and gets an eyeful of Genji, he feels tears on his cheeks—they’ve probably been there for a while, but nothing is getting any better, at this rate.

 

Genji’s legs are utterly smashed from the knees down. Amidst the shattered remains of metal and fiber on the ground around him, blood seeps from the remaining stumps that end just before his knees, and Lúcio, despite all his experience as a medic, has to fight the urge to vomit. He’s close enough for his music to work its healing on Genji, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much, and he can’t tell if Genji’s continued screams stem from pain or just shock at his sudden immobility. As Lúcio approaches and stops himself with one sideways skate, Genji drags himself toward the wall of the closest building, only for his arms to give out and leave him helpless on the asphalt.

 

“Genji, can you hear me? You know I’m here?” To Lúcio’s relief, Genji nods and tries to squirm toward him, not that it helps his condition at all. “Okay, okay, that’s good. We just—the crossfade should help for now, and this mission is about to blow, so we just gotta wait for backup. Tracer?” he shouted, turning his comm on again in hopes that Lena would bring the transport close by.

 

Static rang in his ear, then a chipper, high-pitched voice. “Yes, luv?”

 

“Can you swing the transport around behind Reinhardt? We—we’ve—Genji’s… really hurt.”

 

She responds in the affirmative, and Lúcio checks the street for potential threats before leaning down to assess some of the damage to Genji’s legs. There’s not much to salvage of his cybernetics, other than the bits still hanging from wires and sinewy fibers from Genji’s thighs. He knows intimately how sensitive those wires are, and how much it must hurt to be so exposed. As dangerous as it might be to move him, Lúcio realizes that there’s no room for the transport down this street—Genji will have to be carried for a few meters, at the very least, and unless Angela can swing by, they won’t be able to retrieve all of his legs.

 

His train of thought is cut off, instantly and violently, by Genji’s croaking breaths.

 

“Do you need to take your mask off?” presses Lúcio, kneeling and scooting closer to his incapacitated boyfriend. No response, other than another shuddering sigh, though it’s still an improvement from the screaming. “What else is hurt, Genji? Show me.”

 

Genji lifts one arm, displaying his crushed fingers and the wire fraying in between the metal tendons. Lúcio has to bite down on a sob. Finally, Genji speaks to him, though it’s so much lower and raspier than his usual voice that Lúcio almost looks around for an intruder. “I’ve seen worse.”

 

For a long moment, Lúcio can only stare at him in shock, before his disbelief gets the better of him.  _ “Are you fucking kidding me?” _

 

“I have,” Genji coughs. “‘S only my legs. Last time it was my  _ face.  _ Like I don’t have enough scars.”

 

“Shut up.” Lúcio tracks the hum of the transport landing back around the corner, close enough that he can handle carrying Genji’s dense body on his own. Well, as a matter of fact, he carries Genji all the time, though it’s usually because he’s awfully lazy for a cyborg, and it’s also not in the middle of a fatigue-inducing, all-day battle. “Can you hold on to me?” he asks as he gets his arms under Genji’s knees and back, hefting him up like a bloody, sparking deadlift.

 

Genji chuckles drunkenly. “I can always hold onto you, baaaby.”

 

“Shut  _ up,”  _ repeats Lúcio.

 

“I’m— _ ow ow ow— _ can someone get my feet, Lú? I… I need those.”

 

Lúcio bites his lip, struggling not to jostle Genji and cause him any more pain. “I’ll tell Mercy to come by and pick up what she can. You’re more important.”

 

Despite his vague grumbles of complaint, Genji relaxes somewhat into Lúcio’s arms as he takes off toward the transport. On his skates, it takes no more than a minute to round the corner and approach the ramp, which Reinhardt has graciously moved to cover—the mission is a bust, anyway, and the rest of the team is starting to congregate in order to escape. Lúcio jumps as lightly as he can onto the ramp so that his skates don’t bump too roughly on the rough pavement, though he realizes at Genji’s full-body wince that jumping was probably not ideal, either.

 

“Talk to me, Genji. You still awake?”

 

The arm dangling opposite Lúcio’s chest flies up to grab him, but just smacks him in the face instead. “Did you tell Angie to get my feet?”

 

Lúcio fights the urge to roll his eyes. “I’ll tell her once I set you down, okay? I kinda need both my hands at the moment.”

 

“‘M not that heavy.”

 

“You are, as you’re so fond of saying, seventy percent metal, babe.”

 

Instead of sighing like he’d clearly planned, Genji yelps in pain as an explosion shakes the transport, and Lúcio tips on his skates and nearly falls into the wall. “Sorry, sorry, shit, Genji, I’m sorry,” he hisses, searching for a flat surface somewhere—they have an emergency gurney in the back of the transport, with all the medical supplies, and thankfully Angela had thought to pull it out from the wall before they left. Lúcio approaches it and sets his elbows down first, slowly straightening his arms and then sliding Genji onto the gurney. It’s not exactly best practice, but he doesn’t have to worry about spinal injuries like he would with a fully organic patient; Angela did her best to design vertebral augmentations that would protect Genji’s damaged nerves better than his original anatomy. As soon as his arms are free, Lúcio turns on his comm just to soothe Genji’s fears. “Hey, Mercy, could you swing by the alley where Genji was? We… uh, didn’t manage to bring all of his… feet with.”

 

Angela mutters some tiny noise of confusion, but within a few seconds, she responds. “Affirmative. I have collected what I can. Is he safe?”

 

“Yep. Got him on the gurney, still responsive but bleeding heavily. Crossfade’s not doing much.” Lúcio can only hope that his voice isn’t shaking as hard as it feels.

 

“Prepare what we need for surgery.” The comm shuts off, and in an instant Angela is next to him, golden wings folding neatly into her back. It always creeps Lúcio out a bit, how well the Valkyrie suit meshes with her mannerisms, but now is not the time to worry. “You know how to anaesthetize him, yes?”

 

He’s already opening the hatch on Genji’s non-shuriken wrist, where a catheter conveniently waits for any of his intravenous needs. Lúcio hates to even think about using it, much less all of the procedures that Genji must have suffered through when he was younger, but now he’s at least glad that Genji made a point of showing it to him. “Five milligrams?”

 

“Yes. Oh, I need you to remove his visor, please.”

 

Lúcio almost freezes, but there’s no place for hesitation in an operating room, and his fingers find the switches behind Genji’s temples with practiced efficiency. When he turns back, Angela has already injected the anaesthetic for him and is moving back toward Genji’s legs, preparing vials of local anaesthetic with one hand while the other rotates Genji’s knees so that she can assess the damage. “Do you use the omnic kit, or…?”

 

“Both.” Angela looks up at him, her gaze suddenly shrewd, even while Lúcio pulls out the tools she’ll need and checks to make sure that Genji is actually unconscious, now that the anaesthesia has been administered. “Can you handle this, Lúcio?”

 

“I hope so,” he replies, though his voice wavers as he tries to maintain his usual pep.

 

She only shakes her head and turns back to Genji’s shattered legs. From there, the surgery proceeds with gentle efficiency, as is Angela’s way of life. She keeps Lúcio on hand to take care of supplies, check the medication being administered, and give a second opinion when the mass of wires and mangled tendons is too complex to assess on her own, but she boxes him out without a word every time he gets too close to the carnage. Somewhere behind them, Lúcio hears the rest of the team boarding the transport, and he and Angela hold the gurney in place as well as they can while Lena thrusts the ship into the sky and speeds off toward Gibraltar. He gets the idea that he would’ve been banished to the opposite side of the transport, had there been another medic on hand.

 

They won’t be able to reconstruct Genji’s cybernetic feet until they’re back in Gibraltar, but when they land, Angela has already stopped the bleeding and held off the worst of the damage, then capped his knees with flexible but rough-looking plastic to protect the exposed wires and flesh inside. Zenyatta is waiting for them when the hatch opens. As soon as the gurney is level with the omnic monk, Angela dismisses Lúcio with nothing but a stern look, and then his boyfriend is out of his sight, still unconscious and incapacitated.

 

By some miracle, Lúcio makes it to the cafeteria before he starts to cry in earnest.

 

The rest of the team filters in over the next few minutes, exhausted and put off by a wildly failed mission, but most of them are so focused on food that they hardly notice Lúcio sitting with his head in his arms at the far end of the room. He doesn’t expect comfort—he’s a medic, he knows that Genji is in good hands, and no one on the team has a better bedside manner than him, anyway. But after a few minutes, a repetitive sound approaches: the distinctive jingle that McCree’s boots only make when he really wants to be heard.

 

“You don’t have to sit with me,” Lúcio mumbles into his elbow, even as Jesse flops onto the bench next to him.

 

McCree nudges him with an elbow. “Bullshit. You think just because you’re a healer, you don’t get to be upset when your loved ones are hurt?”

 

Hitting the nail right on the head, as always. Lúcio grumbles in response, loath to prove Jesse right.

 

“Besides, you sat with me and kept me from losin’ it for  _ two fuckin’ weeks  _ when Hanzo got concussed in Manila. It’s the least I can do to worry ‘bout my best friend with you.”

 

Another wave of sobs shakes Lúcio’s shoulders, and he feels Jesse hesitate before reaching out to rub the center of his back. “I know Angela wouldn’t—wouldn’t hurt him,” he whimpers, “but it’s so hard to not—to not be there. I barely even know how his b-body works, and there’s nothing I can  _ do _ when stuff like this happens, so… what kind of boyfriend am I, anyway? Angie probably had me take his mask off just so I felt like I was doing something. Not just sitting around gawking at all the—the wires and shit.”

 

Jesse freezes, his hand gone stiff on Lúcio’s shoulder. “She  _ what?” _

 

“She asked me to take his visor off. She told me once that she—she needs to see his eyes during surgery, and all that.”

 

“No, no, not that.” McCree’s hand moves to grasp his shoulder and turn him so they’re face-to-face. “She had you do it, after he was under?”

 

Lúcio frowns. “Yeah?”

 

“Genji never lets anyone take the mask off without permission,” says McCree. “Like, I took it off once when he got hurt real bad, back in Blackwatch. He didn’t talk to me for a week afterward. An’ he only lets Angie do it since, y’know, she designed the damn thing and she  _ has  _ to do all that maintenance and shit. Nowadays he doesn’t seem to mind, but he used to be real hung up on it, relyin’ on another person like that. If she just had you do it—without asking him—do you take it off a lot?”

 

Unsure of what kind of answer Jesse is looking for, Lúcio fidgets under his scrutinizing gaze. “I mean, yeah, but only—only when we’re, uh, alone.”

 

“So when you’re neckin’?”

 

“Uh. Yeah, I guess.”

 

McCree purses his lips and pulls his hat off his head to run his metal fingers through his hair, only to stop and feign nonchalance when some of the hair gets stuck in said fingers. “There’s no reason for Angie to know that, unless he’s been gossipin’ with her. So if she just told you to do it—”

 

“Is Genji gonna be upset with me?” Lúcio blurts, his eyes shining with tears.

 

“No, no, that’s not what I mean.” McCree finally disentangles his metal hand from his hair and rests it on Lúcio’s other shoulder, rubbing soothingly. “Either Genji  _ was  _ gushin’ about you to Angie, or she had some reason to defer to you once he was unconscious.”

 

Lúcio wipes the tears off his cheek with one hand. “I still don’t get what you’re saying.”

 

“She trusts you,” McCree explains, his voice soft and low. “And Genji trusts you, too. Talk to him about it when he wakes up, okay? I’m just sayin’, it’s a big deal that you’re allowed to even touch his mask, much less when he’s unconscious. Don’t underestimate how much you mean to him.”

 

The door to the cafeteria blows open, and Zenyatta drifts in, one of his hands firmly clamped on Hanzo’s shoulder as they walk (and float) side by side. As soon as he lays eyes on Hanzo, McCree sits up straighter and drops one hand from Lúcio’s shoulder. Zenyatta steers Hanzo toward them and stops a few feet away, holding on to a painfully tense Hanzo with one metal hand.

 

“Good afternoon, McCree, Lúcio,” the omnic greets them. “Mr. Shimada here was attempting to disrupt our work in the medical wing, so I brought him here to hand him off. Lúcio, you are wanted in the medbay, but Mercy suggests that you remove your braces first, lest you forget.”

 

Lúcio heaves a massive sigh; of course Angela knows that he’d keep skating around until his legs were raw and trembling. He has to be careful to keep from overexerting them on his skates, or else he’ll be wheelchair-bound for days and unable to go on missions.

 

And then Genji’s dumb ass will get hurt without him.

 

While Zenyatta finally releases Hanzo, who flops onto the bench half-on top of McCree and immediately starts bemoaning how Mercy won’t let him get in the way of his brother’s medical care, Lúcio gets up and skates back to his room at full speed, narrowly dodging both Mei and Hana on the way. He shouts an apology as he zooms past them, then nearly crashes into his room and unlatches his braces at the hips so that he can wiggle out of them.

 

It takes a good five minutes to get out of his exoskeleton, so to speak, and into his wheelchair, but that’s almost record time for him. He almost regrets not asking McCree or Zenyatta for help. Once he’s settled in the wheelchair, he performs a cursory check to make sure his legs didn’t get too banged up on the mission, and then he’s off. Lúcio’s room is the closest to the medbay, so that he doesn’t have to wheel too far to get to work, and the doors slide open before he even gets to the end of the hallway—Angela is anticipating his arrival.

 

A flood of tension leaves Lúcio’s adrenaline-fueled body when he sees Genji sitting up in bed, clearly whining about his continued lack of feet. As soon as he lays eyes on Lúcio, he cuts off mid-argument and makes a weird mix of a greeting and a squawk, then smiles as Lúcio bites back a laugh.

 

“How are you?” Lúcio murmurs as he wheels up to the side of the bed, reaching out to hold Genji’s flesh hand. His armor plating has all been removed, leaving his left arm and chest bare, and the rest of his body synthetic flesh with the occasional cluster of wires. Lúcio is surprised that he’s awake so soon, but then again, anaesthesia doesn’t work the same on Genji as it would on a fully organic patient. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Angela peek out of her office and then duck back in to give them a few moments of privacy.

 

Genji flops his head toward Lúcio and grins, clearly still on enough painkillers to make him sleepy. “Glad that you’re here. You didn’t do surgery on me, did you?”

 

“Uh. Angela did, since, y’know, you lost your feet—”

 

“No, I mean, did  _ you  _ do surgery?”

 

Lúcio’s eyes widen and he leans forward a few inches in his wheelchair. “I, um, I helped Angie while we were in the transport. She wouldn’t let me come back to the medbay once Zen met us, though.”

 

The scars across Genji’s forehead wrinkle as he frowns. “I’m surprised she even let you help. Are you alright?”

 

“Of course,” laughs Lúcio. “I mean. I help her all the time, it’s totally fine.” 

 

Genji deadpans wordlessly. From her office, Angela’s muffled voice reaches them. “I sent you away because you were about to dissociate completely, Lúcio.”

 

“As I thought.” Genji shakes his head to stop Lúcio before he gets too invested in trying to defend himself. “Lú, it’s alright. You should not have to operate on me unless it’s an absolute emergency, okay? Angela is my doctor, and you’re my boyfriend. It’s already hard enough on her to have to do surgery on all her friends. You don’t need to go through that with me.”

 

For a long minute, Lúcio just gawks at him. “You, uh. Angie asked me to—to take your mask off while you were under, and I—is that okay? I’m really sorry I couldn’t ask you first, Jesse said you don’t—you don’t like—”

 

Genji cuts him off with a gentle laugh. “Jesse hasn’t tried since we were in Blackwatch, and I was a lot more trigger-happy back then. Or, uh, shuriken-happy, I guess. But even if that were still the case,” he continues, gripping Lúcio’s hand until he finally looks up and into his eyes, “I had meant to tell you before, but didn’t have time. If I were, you know, more of a regular human, I wouldn’t put this on you so soon, but my cybernetics require a lot of updates, even now… I want to name you as my proxy, if something ever comes up. Is that okay?”

 

“You… wait, what? I—I’m—it wouldn’t be easier to keep Angela? Or Hanzo, he was furious when they wouldn’t let him in here, you—”

 

“Lúcio,” Genji interrupts with another squeeze of his hand. “Angela designed and still maintains my cybernetics, but I have never trusted her—or anyone else—the way I trust you.”

 

Lúcio struggles to close his mouth and form actual words. “I—you—yeah, of  _ course,  _ you—i-it meant so much to me to even hear that you didn’t like other people taking your visor off, Genji. I can’t even—I can’t tell you how much…” He’s crying again, and he buries his face in his elbow out of embarrassment, but Genji just rubs the back of his hand with his thumb until Lúcio calms down enough to look up at him again. “Can I sign off on you, too? I—I need—Angela’s been harassing me about that, actually, but I didn’t want to put the responsibility on anyone.”

 

Genji smiles softly, and Lúcio has never been more in love with the way his scars bunch up around his dimples. “Of course.”

 

As soon as Genji raises his voice, Angela sweeps back into the room, having changed already from her Valkyrie suit to her usual doctor’s coat and looking far more comfortable for it. “I was not eavesdropping,” she announces, “so I do not know what you were talking about. Do you need something, Genji?”

 

She brings in the paperwork as requested, and the room is silent except for the scratch of ballpoint pens as they both read over, revise, and sign the forms. Genji’s is somewhat more complex, since it includes a number of clauses about deferring to Angela or, secondarily, Zenyatta, should something happen to his cybernetic systems. Once they’re done and Angela has taken the papers back to her office, Genji shuffles closer to the side of the bed so that he can pull Lúcio down into a slow, tender kiss.

 

“So, my love, are you going to carry me home, or will I just have to drag my metal ass across the floor?”

 

Lúcio opens his mouth to answer, but is interrupted at once by Angela. “Don’t you dare leave this medbay, Genji Shimada.”

 

Their eyes meet for a long moment, Lúcio’s hand stroking through the wayward green mess of Genji’s hair while they slowly lean closer to one another. “Do you think you can wheel faster than Angela can walk?” whispers Genji.

 

“Let’s find out.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...and that's the story of how Genji Shimada and Lúcio Correia dos Santos got their asses booted to Mars by one Angela Zeigler, thank you very much. ft. my LAZY ASS TITLES. (it's not an mcr lyric so you should all be grateful)
> 
> I did not expect to enjoy writing Gencio so much, y'all know I'm a Genyatta Stan and also mcgenji and Wow Genji Is Really Hot And Deserves Many Boyfriends, but THIS WAS SO FUN! AND GOT SO OUT OF HAND! I AM NOT THE PERSON WHO USUALLY WRITES _MORE_ THAN INTENDED!! shoutout to [tai](sojmilk.tumblr.com) for talking me into writing some nice good green boys....I might be back for more. It'll probably be smut. I'm a weak man.
> 
> thanks for reading!! mayhaps leave a comment if you want more, or have nice ideas, or just want to make my day <3


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